GottaGetAGrip

Any fans of old Wildstorm might be interested in this:

Abernathy broke some news at the panel, that DC will publish a WildStorm 25th anniversary hardcover collection, including work from creators such as Fiona Staples, Sean Phillips and Lee Bermejo.

 

“The title features some new stories, for instance Brandon Choi and Jim Lee are going to revisit their classic creation WildC.A.T.S.,” Abernathy said. “Jeff Scott Campbell’s going to join us briefly for a new Gen 13 story. Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch will have a new Authority story. Brett Booth is going to revisit Backlash. It’s going to be a really great lineup.” Nguyen will contribute a Wildcats 3.0 story.

 

Lee said the original idea was just to use material “from the vault,” but quickly creators wanted to get involved with new material. Lee said he was surprised by the “enthusiasm and passion” creators had for the WildStorm characters and concepts. “It actually has a fair amount of new stuff in it,” Lee said of the book.

 

“If you’re a fan, this is a book you’ll want to pick up,” Abernathy said. “It’s 200 pages of WildStorm excellence.”

 

Chance of new “Planetary”? “[John] Cassaday is doing a ‘Planetary’ piece in the book,” Abernathy said, but there are no plans for a new series.

http://www.cbr.com/w...wondercon-2017/

It's a pity that Flintstones book will be ending with Issue #12 according to DC's latest solicits. But the writer does have a gay beat poet-reinvention of Snagglepuss in the works for anyone's that interested.

I liked the scene with John in French jail... but I'm hazy on whatever else happened in this issue. I guess Merc's actually the Djinn Chosen One now or something based on what I can remember. If Oliver's run ends with her donning a black suit and proclaiming herself Darth Mercury, then getting into a lightsaber duel with John, this Djinn stuff might just be worth it!

After my initial warm impressions of the art last ish, it's starting to grate on me as well. I feel Tan is bringing a sketchy, unfinished vibe to a lot of his panels, which is reminding me of Manco's final issues back during the Diggle Days.

I assume the actual trailer won't be too far off.

Well, that was unexpected. But if MEA turns out to be bad, look on the bright side: more time to spend with Horizon or the new Zelda, or whatever other big games this year or stuff in your backlog tickles your fancy.

John Wick 2 was a fun action thriller. A good follow-up to the first. There are several lovely scenes such as [ Spoiler : fun with two dudes and a pencil (this actually elicited audible gasps in the theater + applause yay violence I guess) and what may be the most blatant example of the Hollywood Silencer trope I've ever seen. ]

http://variety.com/2...ham-1202006494/

Several characters have been cast for the Scalped pilot.

So far:

Alex Meraz as Dashiell Bad Horse

Gil Birmingham as Lincoln Red Crow

Lily Gladstone as Carol Red Crow

Irene Bedard as Gina Bad Horse

Chaske Spencer as Sheriff Falls Down

Seems that way. Amazon says that trade collects the first nine issues, which would be about 1/2 of that run looking up the issue numbers. Though I don't see a second trade up for pre-order on Amazon, so I'm guessing DC is looking at how the first trade does first.

A worthy send-off for the original cinematic Wolverine and Professor X. The kid who played X-23 did a pretty good job as well.

That little pre-movie teaser they played [ Spoiler : featuring Deadpool ] was a nice unexpected treat.

In addition to the stuff mentioned in those indexes, some of the other books where John appeared during the New 52 include:

-Future's End. This was a weekly limited series that John appeared in, running for 49 issues plus tie-in issues for every on-going at the time. Premise was that Batman Beyond was sent from a Post-Apocalyptic Terminator-esque future to the future of the New 52 timeline to change his future, with several other storylines unfolding at the same time. John, from what I can remember, was palling about with Superman in Africa. Admittedly the tie-in issue for John's solo series (called Constantine - Future's End or something) was one of the better issues of his New 52 era. The issue is stand-alone, if you don't want to read through the entire series.

-World's End. Another weekly limited series. Involved John being shot over to Earth-2 at the same time Darkseid is trying to blow it up. I never read the actual series, but John's time on Earth-2 pretty much was the focus of the final arc of his New 52 series.

Following the New 52, DC launched the DCYou branding where John got a new series that ran for about 13 issues, and a new look consisting of a shorter coat and boots. Like Christian said, this was the point where DC stopped using John as much in books outside his own. The only places I can recall John popping up outside of his solo during this phase was:

-Grayson Annual #3. Features John and other DC characters telling stories about their run-ins with Dick Grayson during his undercover spy period.

-a one-panel cameo in Garth Ennis' All-Star Section Eight mini-series.

Currently, John has an on-going titled The Hellblazer as part of DC's Rebirth line. He made a one-panel appearance in the DC Rebirth Special that started this new branding, and has then stayed put in his own book mostly. However, he has appeared in two specials since the start of Rebirth:

-DC New Talent Showcase: a collection of short stories written by graduates of DC's Writers Workshop. From the online previews, John appears in a story written by a guy named Adam Smith (presumably not the Adam Smith come back from the dead to write comics).

-DC Rebirth Holiday Special: Holiday-themed collection of stories. According to DC's official solicit, this happens: "Wonder Woman interrupting John Constantine’s hellblazing pagan party and more!"

John also appeared in Garth's Six-Pack and Dogwelder mini-series (sequel to the aforementioned ASS8), as a supporting cast member.

The DC Wikia has a pretty comprehensive, via a somewhat unwieldy format, compilation of all his appearances from the New 52 to Rebirth. Should cover anything that hasn't been brought up yet.

Outside of the mainline DC books, John also appeared as a central character in the "Injustice: Year Three" tie-in comic for the Injustice video game. This ran concurrent to his New 52 series.

A 7.5, voted 7, for me. I found this an improvement over the last two issues. I'm interested to see how the 1936 expedition stuff turns out, maybe it'll make the Djinn interesting/threatening. Though given that this is only the first part of the second installment of Oliver's planned Djinn trilogy, I suppose that this arc too could start petering out before the end again.

Despite the colorful quasi-anime aesthetic, I found Tan's art to complement the story better than Guerra's. Though he does put out quite a few funny faces.

http://www.freaksuga...7/?sf57790798=1

“The Smokeless Fire” part 1! Constantine once heard a ghost story in a Parisian bar, and maybe the old man wasn’t just telling tales. So he takes Mercury in search of the only man he knows who’s encountered the Djinn. Problem is, they’re not the only people looking!

If nothing else, at least our new artist draws a pretty Paris.

DC Vs. Looney Tunes is coming http://www.dccomics....-tunes-specials

Batman vs. Elmer Fudd

Lobo & Coyote vs. Road-Runner

Martian Manhunter vs. Marvin the Martian

Plus Jonah Hex, Yosemite Sam, and Foghorn Leghorn!

No creative teams announced yet, though I'm almost certain that the Hex one will be handled by Palmiotti and Gray.

I guess Constantine seducing Sheepdog or vice versa by Azzarello will be in the second wave.

Would newuniversal be an unfinished Marvel work? Though it came long after his initial 90s Marvel work...

Also, one last The Wild Storm interview/preview from Warren before the first issue hits tomorrow:

http://www.vulture.c...uperheroes.html

The second half of the interview:

Without giving away any plot details, what are you hoping to achieve with the revival?

For one thing, I want a new reader to be able to pick it up without any knowledge of the previous line and get a complete experience from it. This isn’t “25 years later.” This is a fresh start. What I’m doing is gathering up the entirety of the previous material, making it a coherent whole, and recasting it in the present day with an original story line that serves the legacy of the work and, hopefully, says something new.

 

I mean, there were a lot of Wildstorm books. And remember I said it was a pirate ship? The world-building was all over the place. I had to sit down and write a fucking cosmology for this project. Jim Lee made me invent 12,000 years of intergalactic history and I will never forgive him.

 

You’ve worked within the context of reboots/reimaginings of existing intellectual property a fair bit in the past, such as newuniversal and your various Ultimate Marvel projects. What are the challenges and opportunities such projects present? How much archival rereading do you do before tackling them?

Usually, I do an absolute ton of reading. A signature of my superhero genre work is that I usually have to read all of it, because I very rarely looked at that stuff as a comics reader. Back in pre-internet days, companies used to have to ship me huge boxes full of photocopies of archival material, hundreds of pages at a time. I had to write Planetary just to get all that out of my head again. I have the unusual advantage this time of having previously written a lot of the archival material, and having previously spent so much time immersed in it that I still retain a lot of the details.

 

Writer Steve Orlando has been doing acclaimed stories in the mainstream DC universe starring your Wildstorm characters Midnighter and Apollo. What do you think of his work on them?

I think Steve is a fine writer, and the book he writes is a good and necessary thing. So, early in the process, I made sure everyone knew I didn’t want this to extinguish Steve’s book. I’m making use of the DC multiversal structure. This is, if you like, “Earth-Wildstorm,” a parallel universe to the regular DC world. This means that Steve’s book takes place in the mainstream DC universe. That frees me to use Midnighter and Apollo, which I plan to — but they will be alternates, and very different versions. Steve’s book stands on its own two feet, and I don’t want to mess with that.

 

Ooh, since you’ve just spilled that Midnighter and Apollo will show up, who else can you say will be around? Elijah Snow and his partners from your Planetary series? Jenny Sparks? Dastardly megalomaniac Henry Bendix?

Well, dropping those names wasn’t much of a spoiler, and they’re a long way away in any case. I have a scheme. I can tell you that Henry Bendix will be along shortly — he’s an original, core Wildstorm character and it’s not like I was going to resist dusting off the creepy old git in any case. You shouldn’t, however, expect to see anyone from Planetary. I consider that book a closed project, and that whole thing had only the barest connections to the Wildstorm Universe anyway.

 

Even mentioning Jenny Sparks would be a spoiler. But you can expect a few more of my old Wildstorm creations to show up. But, for now, this is a book about the characters and themes that Jim and his friends created, way back when, and me, trying to do right by them.

Apparently Warren's also writing a Castlevania animated series for Netflix. Warren writing his non-Big 2 books, The Wild Storm stuff, and an animated series all at the same time? I have a feeling that at least one of his current projects is going to wind up unfinished...

Well it's not exactly Dark Souls but I'm playing through Bloodborne atm.

Yanick Paquette posted this panel from his work on the second volume of Grant's WW Earth-One.

Is that Sean "Alternative Facts" Spicer getting lasso of truthed?

Well having finally seen this it turns out, even with the R-rating, John doesn't light one up. Doesn't curse either, though he does give someone a two-finger salute. I don't actually know how this got an R-rating, since there didn't seem to be anything really out there in terms of violence.

I guess maybe John drinking some beer as well as a

might've been the reason but nothing in this movie really felt R-rated.

It was... okay, I guess. It was nice hearing Matt as John again, I liked the voices for Zatanna, Jason Blood/Etrigan and Swamp Thing (though he was kinda superfluous to the whole thing) as well. Not as bad as I was anticipating, but it's not something to be rushing out of the way to see. There are probably better ways to spend an hour and fifteen minutes.

Not really much of a horror vibe to it, not helped by the DC animation style. There's some horror-ish stuff at the beginning, but then it quickly goes to full-on magic superhero time. Kinda like the actual JLD comic, or at least how I remember it.

Well, now that the first trades are coming out, I might as well chime in to give my 2c on some of the non-HB Rebirth books that I checked out between now and then:

For all the hype behind his return to WW, I really haven't connected with Rucka's stuff here. The alternating stories thing hasn't really worked out, did we really need a full arc devoted to her new origin story instead of just integrating it with the other arc? Honestly, the whole new origin kinda felt like an excuse to say - Hey kids, Nicola Scott is doing WW art! Lately, this book is giving me the "Wonder Woman is a side character in her own book" vibe that Azzarello was criticized for, what with her locked up in a mental asylum while the side-cast goes does stuff. For the record though, I found Azzarello's side-cast of reinvented Gods more interesting than this Steve Generic Military Guy Trevor Rucka seems to really like writing. The art is pretty though, I must admit.

The Flash - Joshua Williamson's Flash didn't give a good first impression. I liked the voice he gave to the Barry Allen Flash but his overall story was pretty clumsy. A kind of silly premise "wow what if a bunch of people got speed powers and Flash had to train them" that went nowhere. A pretty obvious mystery [ Spoiler : Who could this evil new villain be? Surely it couldn't be this character who has a past with Flash we just introduced? ] that was already lame when they did it in Batman: Hush. If these book wasn't one of the biweeklies, the decompression of his first arc would've been hell over eight months. Not a fan of Carmine Giandomenico's art (he's supposedly the main artist but this book gets fill-in artists so often I kinda question it) - he does a decent job displaying speed which is good in a Flash book but I just never was a fan of how he draws people.

Batman - I haven't found Tom King's take on DC's greatest cash-cow isn't as good as his earlier work for the Big 2. I suppose that I place a greater scrutiny upon Batman than Vision or the Omega Men. Some of his dialogue could do with a bit more polish, and for some reason, he likes to have Batman and Catwoman refer to each other as "Bat" and "Cat" which does feel silly. Still, I've enjoyed what King's done in his stories for the most part and I appreciate the smaller scale of his stories in comparison to the over-the-top Gotham-destroying blockbusters that made up Snyder's run. Art for this one's pretty good, even David Finch's contributions.

Overall, though I do enjoy several of the books, for all the hype Rebirth hasn't put out anything that I would call amazing just yet.

Well, aren't self-aggrandizing self-puff pieces pretty much the purpose of an advertising mag?

Picked up a copy of the first Kill or be Killed trade. Great stuff, and I definitely will be buying the next trades as they come out to see just how this long and winding road of violence and pretty pictures by Philips that Brubaker's cooked up turns out.

Read Wytches, courtesy of the library. I'm a fan of Scott Snyder's work - American Vampire's good trashy fun, loved his Batman Black Mirror, and I even liked his New 52 Batman run as overwritten as it could be at times. Wytches didn't fully click with me. I found the story and characters a bit generic. I do feel that overall the book has potential for improvement and good things in future installments that I will check out when they happen and Jock's art was a plus as always though I wasn't a fan of the colorist they picked.

Small excerpt from the The Wild Storm promo that's in this week's new DC books:

Looking at the redesigned Engineer, why do I have a sneaking suspicion that Warren watched just a little bit of Super Sentai and mecha anime while writing this relaunch?

I'm wavering between a 4 and 5. This was the first issue of this run that just flat out bored me, and these last two issues kind of felt like they were padded out to give the trade more pages. John came across as a non-entity in this issue since the focus was on Merc and her shenanigans, and I wasn't the biggest fan of the art. I guess it's nice we finally got to know the villain's plan, though, instead of having the reveal be dragged out for twelve more issues.

All this talk of Djinn and lost cities, plus the globetrotting, makes me wonder if Oliver is going to have John and Merc reenact the plot of the video game Uncharted 3.

The other book with John this week, the Dogwelder one, I enjoyed that one some more.

Does anyone have any thoughts on Jamie Delano's World Without End? A hardcover collection recently came out, and I've been pondering a purchase.

Some non superhero/Star Wars films I saw recently via a mix of theaters, leeching off friends streaming services, the library dvd section, and airplane flights:

Ben Affleck's Live By Night is probably the weakest of his directorial efforts so far (I haven't seen Argo yet), though there is plenty to like about his tribute to classic gangster cinema. There's fantastic cinematography, nice visual recreation of Prohibition-era America, and great action scenes. I suppose the biggest fault with this film is that it may have been a bit too ambitious for its own good, feeling like a series of great moments connected by a far weaker string. Throughout the approximate two-hour runtime, the plotting and pacing could feel a bit unfocused and rushed at times, leaving me wondering if there wasn't some longer director's cut that smoothes out these kinks lying on the floor somewhere. I enjoyed Ben's performance as well as most of the supporting cast even if the characters and the story were not the most original of crime yarns. I left feeling that ultimately, the story Ben wanted to tell would've worked better in a different format, such as a TV mini-series. Though, any film in this current climate that features the KKK getting their just desserts deserves some credit for the catharsis factor! B- I say, maybe wait for the digital/dvd release.

Shin Godzilla - After the 2014 American Godzilla brought the franchise out of a 10 year hiatus, the Japanese have released their own reboot of the Big G. It's a political satire meets giant monster, and though the former doesn't always work, the film does deliver on the latter. Great monster action and effects, I was surprised to find out that Godzilla's supposedly full CGI emulating classic rubber suit in this one. It doesn't take as long as the 2014 film to get to the Godzilla bits, and from his first appearance onwards, there's a very nice crescendo of shit hitting fans leading up to one of the most Holy S%$! atomic breath scenes in the series. The pacing does take a hit afterwards though, when the action takes a break for the obligatory scenes of expository people trying to figure out how to stop Godzilla. As it was spearheaded by the man behind the Evangelion anime, it does get very weird (to put it lightly) in regards to its depiction of Godzilla but I did actually like that this film tried something new rather than rehash the old stuff like some other films in this series. B

Hell or High Water - In Texas mustachioed Chris Pine and his significantly less attractive balding brother rob banks to save the family farm while frustrated Sheriff Jeff Bridges tries to catch them! I found it to be a very strong crime drama/modern western with great performances by its leads, though I was the outlier among the people I watched it with, as they were turned off by the slow burn nature of the film. A-

Dragon Blade - a 2015 Chinese film where John Cusack is a Roman legionnaire who teams up with Jackie Chan to fight Adrien Brody. Even casting the shaky historical premise of Roman Legionaries in Ancient China aside, this is a very silly film that tries to present a message about friendship/unity. This leads to scenes where ancient Chinese and Roman soldiers engage together in musical numbers and training montages. Some entertaining fighting from Jackie aside, I wouldn't really recommend watching it unless you're looking for some so bad its good fluff, and it has one of the most unbearable child actors I have ever witnessed. Might be worth checking out with your buds when drunk to mock. D+

Star Trek Beyond - I was only a casual fan of Star Trek at best, so I was never too troubled by the 2009 reboot. Having skipped the second, I jumped straight into this one. I was entertained by the action scenes and the performances of the Starfleet Crew. A fun but ultimately light experience. I did find Idris Elba to be woefully wasted in his role as the villain. B-

The Revenant - Left for dead by mean Tom Hardy after an encounter with CGI bear gone awry, Leonardo DiCaprio develops quite a lust for revenge. A very visually striking and enjoyably brutal albeit somewhat dragged out tale of the American frontier, I still found it ultimately to be just a typical revenge story filtered through some very stylized lens. B

I'll also have to add to The Nice Guys praise in here. Probably was my favorite film that I saw in theaters last year. A-

Maybe that's how he gets the color of his hair and skin.